During one fine lazy afternoon, I went back to an era that doesn't exist anymore. And met the woman of my dreams...During the late 20's early 30's Carole Lombard was one of the biggest stars to ever grace the movies. I went to see two of her films, "Virtue" (1932) and "White Woman" (1933), which are films that came out of a so called "pre-code" era.
Pre code era films were produced around Carole's hey day, and featured a set of relaxed and free expressed ideas of the time before the motion picture industry decided to step in and become the moral equivalent of "Stern Father" and purveyor of good public decency. Many of the pre-code era films of the 30's featured stories about characters that you weren't suppose to talk about such as prostitutes and gangsters. Surprisingly, the films stayed away from happy go lucky paint by number formulaic goodness, and had the nerve to discuss sex (all be it by 30's talk and innuendo, hey someone had to tell Scarlet he didn't give a damn), drugs, or anything considered taboo.
In this climate of ignoring stuffy repressed criticism, emerged the opportunity for directors, actors and script writers to buck convention. Life we discovered on screen, didn't always have happy and perfectly dressed wrapped up endings (put sometimes they could...).
In the first film I witnessed "Virtue", Carole Lombard is a criminal who ignores a court order and tries to go straight by escaping the judge's actions. At one point she's up, at one point she's down, but through it all she has her pride, her wise cracks and straight forward gumption that appears to be the hallmarks of what would be the godmother of fierce determination for woman everywhere. It seems in sharp contrast to the prostitute in Elmer Gantry of 1960, a film whose book had much more racy subject matter that the movie code of that time would even allow.
For 1930 this seems astonishing, almost as much as witnessing the handpainted signs in the restaurant walls that Carole and her love interest drop into from time to time that read phrases such as: "spagetti dinner... 15 cents".
The basic plot is straightforward, the notion of someone who is trying to escape their "scandalous" past (as much as we don't get to know the specific details in the film). However, it's the marvelous presence that Carole has over every actor in this film that makes everyone pale in comparison when she is on screen. Her love interest Jimmy Doyle played by Pat O'Brien is a good fit and great on screen also, but when Carole is walking, or she's talking, or sitting seductively there's no contest. They both make the film pleasing to the audience. She even makes pumping gas and getting grimmy look sexy. Do you think you'd see a film in the 50's of a woman working in a gas station??????
I thought my infatuation would stop there, but it didn't. It just got worse...
The next film that followed after was "White Woman", a so called "jungle picture". Carole plays a down and out widow who sings at a dive restaurant in some foreign jungle colonial country. It's all she can do to support herself... oh woe is me.... One day arrives what could only be described as the biggest Australian piece of buffoonery that ever existed in the form of Charles Laughton as Horace Prin. This vegemite sandwich just has more cheese than you can handle.
Laughton immediately becomes a scene stealer with his over acting, outrageous movements, rotund girth, and impish voice, that he suddenly becomes a different character in almost another film. In short it's over the top, loud, and so off kilter that it destroys any sense of continuity and chemistry the picture would have had. The good side of it is that from time to time it becomes entertaining up to a point in a strange way.
Carole fights the good fight, and never looks bad, but is overshadowed by Laughton in what literally seems to be a sense of scene stealing, when everyone probably knows they are in one hell of a turkey movie anyway. So let him have his fun. Prin convinces Carole's character Judith to shack up with him and marry, and lo behold they are stuck in the jungle with Prin being the demented grandfather to Col Kurtz, and Judith trying to find a way to escape.
Even in this turkey Carole looks and still has everything to eye at on screen. It's still amazing how some stars even in bad pictures can capture awe, and wonder the viewer. Prin tries to demonstrate that he's no Olivier, but that's okay, since the script also places in a B rated Clarke Gable (whose real name I can't recall), and a B rated John Wayne for good measure also (Charles Bickford).
In short though, it's Carole I'll always remember. Even in this dud she looks unbelievable when we first see her in a black long V neck cut dress. It's enough to forget the flash and dash of today's movie starlets.
However, Laughton goes for broke and the picture has nowhere to go but down, and by then we have seen enough. But for me I haven't seen enough of Carole and want more.
I will desire and find her soon just as quickly as I can get those cheap 15 cent spagetti dinners or precious diamonds from so long ago.
